Additional Contributors
437swimwear.com:
437 Swimwear
Introduction
When Hyla Nayeri and Adrien Bettio met in their first year of the Queen's Commerce program, it quickly became apparent that they were going to be best friends. However, they couldn't have imagined the exciting journey they would embark on to become successful entrepreneurs because of their common interests in travel, fashion, beach lifestyles, and swimwear.
Video: Curvy Fit
After almost a full year of business, 437 Swimwear has grown to become a successful online boutique swimwear brand. It features , bottoms and one-pieces that are specially designed to enhance the natural curves of women's bodies by following a minimalist aesthetic. Currently, 437 Swimwear has 49,600 Instagram followers1 and approximately 2,500 swimwear orders have been received in 2018.
With the winter months quickly approaching, the most pressing issue that needs attention is how to best grow the brand's Australian market and presence. This is important because it offsets the seasonality of the North American swimwear market, where over 80% of 437 Swimwear customers are currently located.
With their first major Instagram influencer trip planned in December, the girls are also aiming to generate additional sales from holiday gift purchases, as well as seasonal travellers to beach destinations during the colder months. Furthermore, they are aiming to grow the wholesale side of the business to get more retail outlets to carry their inventory. They will do this through participation in the 2019 Miami Swim Week show, the world's largest swimwear event - https://www.swimshow.com/
Background
In the third year of their commerce program, fuelled by their passion for beaches and travel, both girls pursued international exchanges. Hyla decided to study in Rome, Italy while Adrien went to Toulouse, France. Every weekend, they would meet up and travel to the most beautiful beaches in Europe. They experienced the joy of the beach life at exclusive destinations across Greece, the Amalfi Coast and Portugal.
Video: Purchasing a Bathing Suit
The more they travelled, the more they fell in love with the freedom of this lifestyle and started to brainstorm what they could do to be able to live it all the time. Because of their many common interests, they decided to start a business that embodied their values and passions. It didn't take long for them to agree that swimwear was the perfect product with which to build this dream.
"We love swimwear. Adrien has an eye for fashion, and I really like the whole e-commerce startup scene," Hyla says. Why not launch a swimwear line?2
After returning from their exchange in July 2016, the girls were sitting in McDonald's late one night, eating their beloved hamburgers. They wanted to come up with a business name as quickly as possible, so they could continue on the journey to start their swimwear business. They didn't want a cheesy or cliché beachwear name that they'd be embarrassed to tell their friends about. The name they decided on, '437 Swimwear', was inspired by their home address in Kingston at the time, 437 Johnson Street.
"Hyla and I are people who basically pursued our dream, which was to start a business, to travel, you know, to make beautiful swimwear."
Timeline of Key Events:
April 2016: Adrien and Hyla came up with the initial idea to start 437, while in Europe on an exchange
July 2016: The new Canadian online swimwear brand 437 Swimwear, was started and aimed to target university-age females
November 2016: Following a successful Black Friday / Cyber Monday online sale, Hyla and Adrien decided to pursue 437 Swimwear for their full-time jobs
June 2017: The partners travelled to both China and Bali, for a 6-week long supplier and content trip
August 2017: The officially rebranded 437 Swimwear was launched; this is the 437 we know today. This is also what the partners consider the official launch.
November 2017: 437 officially received its new inventory, designed for a more mature and sophisticated demographic
January 2018: The partners decided to partner with a new manufacturer in New York City
May 2018: Adrien and Hyla realized that they had been scammed for $20,000 USD, and their order from the New York City manufacturer was not coming
June 2018: A photo shoot was done in Los Angeles for 437's current billboard advertisement
July 2018: Adrien and Hyla attended Miami Swim Week for the first time
November 2018: A month-long manufacturing trip to China is planned
December 2018: 437 Swimwear's first Instagram influencer trip is taking place
Market Research
Both Hyla and Adrien were very fashion conscious and found themselves increasingly turning to online retailers to source the most unique outfits for themselves. When brainstorming how to best launch their swimwear brand, three fashion brands helped to provide substantial inspiration:
1) Company name: Revolve
Website: https://www.revolve.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revolve/
Number of Instagram Followers: 2,500,000
2) Company name: Sabo Skirt
Website: https://saboskirt.com/shop/new
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saboskirt/
Number of Instagram Followers: 1,600,000
3) Company name: Meshki
Website: https://www.meshki.com.au/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meshki/
Number of Instagram Followers: 948,000
"It was such a big thing for Australian brands to have online sites and really cool Instagrams, so we started following them and they influenced us when we were deciding what to use."
From this market research, they decided that Instagram would be a main selling platform for the 437 new swimwear brand.
Video: Sizing and Fit
The brainstorming continued, and the girls decided to come up with a minimum viable product (MVP) that they could start selling right away. A MVP is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide minimum viable product feedback for future product development. Gathering insights this way is less expensive than developing a product with more features, which increase costs and risks if the product fails, for example, due to incorrect assumptions.
"When we were school in our fourth year, it was just like, let's just put something online, see if one person might buy something, see if there's traction, and then at that point, we were like, okay, this is a legitimate business."
Competitors
In addition to the three online fashion retailers listed above, another primary source of initial inspiration to start 437 Swimwear came from a brand called Lahana Swim, an Australian-based company. The founder of Lahana, Vrindy Benson, is very close in age to Hyla and Adrien, who were both born in 1995. The girls were both impressed that another young woman in their age range had experienced so much success, so early on in life. Seeing Vrindy's company's success gave Adrien and Hyla courage that they could do the same. Currently, Lahana Swim has 434,000 followers on Instagram and is continuing its growth.
There is overlap in the target demographics of these Australian companies (Lahana, Meshki, Sabo Skirt) and 437. However, 437 Swimwear identified that many North American customers are reluctant to shop from Australian brands, because of the expensive duties involved.
Another major competitor of 437 is a company called Frankie’s Bikinis, which is one of the biggest players in the industry. With 806,000 followers on Instagram, Frankie's targets a young market with the brand's fun and playful styles. When starting their company, the girls identified an overlap between the target demographic of Frankie's and 437 Swimwear, which included females in university. However, following their rebranding (discussed below), 437 began to cater to a more mature and sophisticated demographic, with more discretionary income.
Additionally, low-cost competitors such as Zaful and Forever 21 are relevant players in the swimwear market. With trendy and extremely affordable styles, many young females enjoy shopping with these companies. However, 437 wanted to provide much higher quality products, and more specialized designs, than these brands, have been able to offer.
Video: Influencers
When asked if any competitors used influencer marketing, Adrien replied:
"All of the brands mentioned have used some form of influencer marketing. Brands like Revolve, Lahana, and Sabo Skirt are well known for using influencers on Instagram to promote their products via stylized photos."
According to Adrien in a recent interview question about the competitive environment, she stated "There is not one brand we would single out as our biggest competitor at this time. However, we do track a lot of brands that are similar in size to ours. We also keep close tabs on larger brands that we admire. We try to follow as many swimwear and women's clothing brands as we can so that we can take inspiration from brands across the clothing/beauty market and apply cool things they do to our own brand (ex. Giveaway post ideas, sponsored post ideas, story highlight ideas, etc.)"
Product/Price Positioning
Setting Price Points
The partners started their swimsuit pricing process with the positioning map (above), and then placed themselves on there. Then, they looked at the price points of their competitors and decided on the pricing range they wanted 437 Swimwear to be in. Within this range, individual swimsuit items including tops, bottoms and one-piece suits were priced, based on the features of the items. After the re-branding in summer 2017, their prices changed to reflect the new higher quality and brand image of their merchandise and lifestyle targets.
When asked about the logic behind increasing their selling prices, Adrien responded:
"We wanted the higher pricing to be a reflection of the increased effort put into the design and production of the suits. We believe that girls should approach punching a swimsuit with the same amount of consideration and effort as purchasing a bag or a nice pair of shoes. Understanding that the situation where women are wearing bathing suits is essentially one of the most stressful situations for many people helped guide us in our pricing. We think women should be willing to spend a little more money for a quality suit that will help them feel like the most comfortable version of themselves when they are showing their whole body off and could otherwise be self-conscious."
"We wanted to be sophisticated but not too sophisticated. Expensive, but affordable."
Finding Suppliers
When considering which manufacturer to work with, Adrien and Hyla's had very strict guidelines that they wanted to follow related to quality fabrics, ethical production, and operations that were in alignment with positive corporate social responsibility practices (e.g., fair wages, good working conditions, etc.).
They were very impressed by a female manufacturer in China who, like Adrien and Hyla, was young and very driven. The girls decided to work with this woman because her fabrics were incredible quality and she valued ethical business practices. Additionally, they were excited at the opportunity to support and empower more women, through their manufacturing partnership.
When asked about how they found the right supplier to work with, Adrien responded:
"We hired a third party to find our manufacturer. They are experts on the Chinese manufacturing space and we gave them specific criteria we were looking for in a manufacturer. They found some options, and then we requested each produce a version of our designs so we could see if we liked their work. When we went to China we met with the manufacturer we liked best, and we liked them so we ultimately moved forward with them."
Sizing/fitting
With their initial bathing suit offerings, Hyla and Adrien decided to start out with three sizes: small, medium and large. They based their size small off of their own curvy, 5'3 body types. They are currently in the process of adding sizes Extra-Small and Extra Large.
It was very important to the girls that 437's sizing range empowered women, and did not make them feel embarrassed or uncomfortable about their bodies.
Traditionally, many women tend to size up when buying swimwear, especially bathing suit bottoms, due to the worry of 'muffin top' or other curve-related issues. Their 437 suits run true to size and were specifically designed to properly hug and flatter the natural curves of all women. Hyla and Adrien dedicated significant time, energy and resources when designing their suits, to ensure they were universally flattering on all body types. The suits are designed with a minimalist aesthetic in mind, and rigorous testing is constantly done to ensure that the suits stand up to multiple washings at different water temperatures.
Logo
Following their rebranding in summer 2017, they hired a graphic designer, Lindsay Mariko. They wanted to create a new logo design that reflected the minimalist aesthetic, yet higher-quality, of the brand. Lindsay's graphic and branding work for 437 can be seen here: http://www.lindsaymariko.com/437-swim/. The scripted logo that Lindsay created for 437 is shown below.
Packaging
The partners decided it was important to invest extensively in the packaging of the products.
While in China on their first manufacturing trip, the girls sat down and had a discussion about what they wanted their brand's packaging to embody.
"We said okay – when a customer purchases a bathing suit from us, they're spending about $150USD. We want to make sure that a decent chunk of that goes towards the cost of packaging. So, when they receive their package from us, it feels like they're getting a gift."
"So, when we were thinking about what we wanted to do, we literally just sat there and said okay, what would we like to receive? And then we came up with the idea that we were going to do a white branded box with our logo on the top, and when you open it, there's tissue paper that's folded with our sticker."
Return/Guarantee Policy
The partners decided to provide store credit for all returns to the 437 online shop. To receive the store credit customers needed to follow a simple two-step process:
1) Return their unused products to the company within 7 days of receiving their suits; and
2) Provide a reason for the return.
Currently, returns are averaging about 11% of sales, due mostly to customers choosing the incorrect size.
Staff
Since starting the business in 2017, 437 Swimwear has been led by its two original founders, Hyla Nayeri and Adrien Bettio. Both partners have worn multiple hats that are changing and evolving all the time as the business continues to grow. Adrien and Hyla operate primarily out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Adrien manages the company's major business operations and also oversees the company's design direction, production and social channels.
Hyla manages sales and strategic partnerships, collaborations and growth strategies. She also handles matters related to the brand's voice and copywriting. In 2018, 437 Swimwear also hired another full-time employee, Noura, who is their Head of Operations. She deals with various creative marketing projects in addition to doing all the packing of orders and customer service. An example of a creative marketing project was their "takeout box" campaign, which was thought of mid-August 2018 and executed early September. To 50 of their top influencers, they sent takeout boxes with suits inside, customized chopsticks, custom fortune cookies, and a 437 menu and receipt.
This campaign went viral and generated over 2000 followers within 3 days.
From L to R: Gabby - Collaborations Intern, Noura - Head of Operations, Adrien, Hyla, Sarah - Wholesale Intern, Jordan - Graphic Design Intern, (missing Julia - Operations Assistant Intern).
Starting and running 437 has been, and still is, a very collaborative process. Key duties and responsibilities are organized as follows:
1) Instagram: Adrien handles all the layouts and posts on Instagram, but Hyla typically adds things to the brand's Instagram Story. The company owners are hoping to find a dedicated Instagram intern, who will take over all Instagram-related duties in the near future.
2) Email Marketing: Adrien also handles this for the time being. Once the Instagram intern is brought on, he/she will also take on the responsibility of the email marketing. The goal is to ensure a consistent voice and aesthetic across all marketing channels.
3) Company Website and Shopify: Hyla built the website on Shopify and is responsible for the upkeep of it. She also looks into new apps to add to the website to increase the conversion rate. Adrien regularly reviews the Shopify metrics in order to make decisions about inventory ordering and relay any notable stats to the team.
4) Suit Design, Manufacturing, R&D: Both Adrien and Hyla work together on all of these important elements. However, Adrien typically bears the responsibility of checking in and staying on top of all relevant issues related to these areas.
5) Influencers: Hyla is responsible for finding 437's key influencers and is the contact for them. She ensures that the relationship between the influencer and 437 is strong.
Financing the venture
To start the business in their fourth year of BComm, each girl contributed $1,000 CAD. They have never accepted any funding. In addition to this, they won $5,000 from the Queen's University Paul and Tom Kinner Business Pitch Competition.
Site design, execution, management/hosting
The choice of what platform to use for their e-commerce site was crucial. In the end, the partners picked Shopify to manage their platform and for their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.
Shopify collects all pertinent data related to customer interactions and sales and provides important data to the girls such as most valuable customers, who has ordered the most, which suits have sold the most or least, which month has been the best, etc. The reporting features are incredibly useful when it comes to re-ordering inventory, launching new colourways and products. Because of data provided by Shopify, the girls decided to come up with combo bathing suit styles, because they saw that they had been very popular with their customers.
Shopify has helped the girls manage the level of familiarity and personal awareness they have with their customers, even as the company continues to grow.
As decided in the initial conceptualization stage of launching the brand, Instagram would be the main social media tool used.
Adrien and Hyla want the content on their brand's Instagram to be as relatable as possible, so they include a lot of user-submitted photos from their customers. Many of them are mirror selfies taken by their clients. Various body types are proudly shown, and user-generated content is encouraged. The result is a very empowering community of women of all shapes and sizes who appear proud of their self-images.
Regular news and brand-related updates are also shared on the 437 Instagram page.
Different model and influencer photos are also included, for the 'wow factor," and to help customers understand the messaging and focus of the 437 brand.
"So, when you have a model that looks like wow, she's clearly a famous model. She was expensive clearly to hire for the suit, and she really sells the bathing suit. That's important to have because people understand that the brand cares about quality."
Instagram Influencers
Adrien discusses the company's Instagram activities in the interview questions below.
Adrien: There are TONS of big influencers in 437. Hyla typically creates gifting lists based on the type of influencers we have experienced positive engagement from in the past. For example, when we started gifting girls in the fitness niche on Instagram, we realized that their followers responded a lot more to the content (by engaging with our brand, following us, purchasing etc.) than other niches such as fashion bloggers. Hyla would then search Instagram for more similar girls in that niche and build her gifting strategy around that specific niche. Sometimes she gifts in a niche like fitness, and other times she will choose to gift to a bunch of girls in one city to try to saturate a geographical area. There are many gifting strategies that Hyla uses. We find that when you gift in one niche/area, you get a better overall response because people are seeing one brand all over their timelines which helps us leave more of an impression than when someone just sees us once on an influencer they follow.
So, to return to the question, there is not really a formal way that we "add influencers", however, if we do get positive feedback and they like our products, when we come out with new styles and colours we make an effort to send it to them in order to maintain a positive relationship. I think that it would be interesting to see how certain influencers have affected our sales, but we have found it rather complicated to attribute sales to one person or instance. As mentioned, it is the repeated interaction with our brand that seems to drive sales, rather than just one person's individual ability to sell a suit.
"It's important to have well-known models/ influencers in your product, as it adds to the "cool" factor, but it's important to have customer images posted as well so that it's relatable for potential customers." There are approximately 30-40 main influencers that we work with on a consistent basis. Which means that we send them all of our new styles and our campaign packages. There are approximately 5-8 influencers which we consider our "big" influencers - the ones who generate the most in sales for us and we have a huge relationship with. However, we have probably gifted over 300 different influencers in the last year.
Video: Mexico
In December 2018, four major social media fitness influencers will be flown to Mexico for a 437 Swimwear trip. These four girls are close friends and have a combined Instagram following of over 4.5 million people.
These four influencers were selected by Adrien and Hyla because they all have really dedicated followers who trust their opinions and follow their lives closely. The 437 Swimwear brand has already received a huge amount of sales that are directly related to each of these girls, as well as thousands of new followers. Additionally, because all four are already friends, this will make the Mexico trip a more positive experience for each of them. This may help give them a much better overall experience with the 437 Swimwear brand.
When discussing this upcoming influencer trip, Adrien shared some of the logic and logistics involved -
The approximate budget for the trip is $25,000 CAD. We will be looking for some brand sponsorship in order to give the girls an overall great experience, but we do not want to have so many brands included that it feels "sales-y" or oversaturated. This trip will be mostly self-funded!
For example, we hope to partner with a luggage company to send them a carry-on suitcase before the trip with a bunch of new swimsuits, beach makeup products, hair products, etc. This will be a great opportunity for them to show their followers that they have an upcoming trip with us and will be a great Instagrammable experience in general. In terms of products, we have not finalized any collaborations at this point in time, but will be working on this in the coming weeks.
We picked the resort by using a luxury vacations website and finding a property that was beachfront and had beautiful, modern bedrooms for each guest. It also includes a chef which will make the process of organizing meals a little easier for us. We wanted to make sure the place we stay is Instagrammable and easily facilitates photoshoots.
Other Marketing Initiatives
The staff at 437 are constantly brainstorming for new ways to grow their brand and engage in meaningful ways with both current and future customers. In addition to the brand's extremely active Instagram presence and e-mail marketing, 437 undertook its first official billboard advertisement this year in Los Angeles. Please see below for the billboard, which is currently displayed in Toronto.
Billboard Advertising
437 undertook its first official billboard advertisement in 2018, which was shot in Los Angeles, and graphically designed by their intern, Jordan. This was displayed on King St W. and Portland St., for July and August 2018.
It cost approximately $3,500 CAD for the duration of the ad, including the art-work. However excluding the cost of shooting the model, which was approximately lifestyle. However, those photos were used all over the website and Instagram as well.
Both Hyla and Adrien knew that there would not be a direct ROI from the billboard, whereas it would be for exposure and brand legitimacy, and it was a personal goal of theirs.
Pop-up Shops
437 has participated in various Pop-Up shops and is excited to continue to do so. Pop-up retail, also known as pop-up stores or flash retailing, is a trend of opening short-term sales spaces. The pop-up industry is now estimated to be worth billions of dollars annually around the world.
Below is the Facebook page from 437's Queen's Pop-Up event in February 2017.
In June of 2018, 437 participated in was the Concept x Flawless by Friday Pop-up
Shop at Yorkdale Mall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Here 437 was one of 14 exhibitors who participated.
Metrics/Results
When 437 Swimwear first began, Adrien and Hyla were very aware of their follower numbers and tracked them constantly. They like to look at daily, weekly and monthly sales volumes. They also check their photo likes and comments to measure viewer engagement.
When they started the business, they were quite fixated on the number of impressions received on Instagram. Over time, the partners have realized that this is less material to the success of their business.
437 Swimwear likes to measure the company's cart recovery. When cart recovery processes were improved, a huge spike in sales occurred. With an average of 7%, the brand went from approximately 4% cart recovery up to 19%.
When asked what was the change made in the recovery process, Adrien responded:
Hyla edited the cart-recovery text and added a discount code for 20% off if the purchase was made in the next 24 hours. Due to the discount added and the time pressure, this is what increased their cart recovery percentage.
Additionally, the 437 team likes to monitor what the most popular swimsuit styles are, and what combinations are typically purchased together. This facilitates decisions around ordering future inventory.
When asked about their inventory management, Adrien stated -
Based on what the inventory counts are, we are able to track which suits are doing the best and when they need to be reordered. Once quite a few people start posting about a certain style or colour, it then blows up. It usually takes approximately a month to see a become popular.
1st year of Business Metrics
| 12 Months |
# Visits to 437 site (Rounded) |
Orders placed (Rounded) |
% Website Conversion Rate |
# Instagram Followers (Rounded) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projected - October |
35,000 |
350 |
1.4 |
60,000 |
| Projected - September |
25,000 |
300 |
1.3 |
52,000 |
| 2018 August |
29,700 |
410 |
1.3 |
47,000 |
| July |
63,700 |
990 |
1.5 |
46,000 |
| June |
74,000 |
640 |
0.8% |
41,000 |
| May |
26,000 |
320 |
1.2% |
28,000 |
| April |
18,000 |
160 |
0.9% |
26,000 |
| March |
23,000 |
170 |
0.7% |
24,000 |
| February |
20,000 |
120 |
0.6% |
20,000 |
| 2018 January |
22,000 |
110 |
0.5% |
16,000 |
| December |
14,000 |
90 |
0.6% |
16,000 |
| 2017 November |
11,000 |
140 |
1.3% |
12,000 |
When asked about sales cycles, Adrien stated -
We believe that September and October will be among our slowest months. They come right after summer so most people are not looking to purchase new swimwear. Additionally, they are not months where people typically take vacation. We think things will pick up substantially in November (due to Black Friday and Cyber Monday) and December (the Holiday season), and likely carry on to 2019 (as resort season begins).
Lessons Learned So Far
437 Swimwear learned a lot from the costly business mistake of shipping out of a fulfillment centre based in San Francisco. As Adrien recounted -
437 Swimwear learned a lot from the costly business mistake of shipping out of a fulfillment centre, based in San Francisco. They prematurely agreed to work with this fulfilment centre, and got all of their suits sent from their manufacturers to this location. They soon realized that they type of business 437 was, was not suitable for a fulfilment centre as they had so many different types of variants, and personalization was extremely important at the beginning stages. They also didn't have enough orders for the monthly fulfilment cost to make sense. After an expensive decision of moving all of the inventory from that location to Toronto, they started shipping out of Adrien's basement. After approximately 5 months of doing that, they got a condo which they used as an office and a place for Hyla and Adrien to sleep. Within 4 months into their 12 month lease, they quickly realized that it was a stupid decision and moved the business into a 3 story office for 437 to move into, and they each found one bedroom apartments to live in nearby.
Not only was this extraordinarily expensive, but it reduced the amount of customization options available for individual orders. It was, and still is very important to Adrien and Hyla to be able to include their handwritten cards with every order, as well as other special details for certain influencers or other types of customers. Now, the girls work with a company that drives their products across the Canada/U.S.A. border, and ships directly out of the United States. This keeps shipping costs a lot lower, and allows 437 to offer complimentary shipping on all orders over $150USD, which ship out of either the United States or Canada.
Another major setback was when 437 decided to partner with a new manufacturer based out of New York City for their upcoming ribbed bathing suit collection. As they felt that a legitimate partnership was created, they put down a deposit of $20,000 USD for these suits. After several attempts to get in touch with this manufacturer once the deposit was paid, the girls realized that they had been scammed, and their $20,000 USD was lost.
Adrien: The main takeaway for us was that we can sometimes be too trusting and should always look to minimize risk when we aren't completely sure about something. Since it was our first time working with the NYC manufacturer, we should have gotten our agreement in a written, formal contract, and we should have asked to put down a lesser amount for the initial deposit.
To future business owners, both partners recommend that you to start right away! It is not necessary to waste time trying to come up with the perfect logo, website or even brand name right off the bat. The girls have learned that it is possible to constantly iterate, improve, learn, and grow along the way!
It is also really important to support the connections around you, and leverage your network as much as possible. Queen's Commerce will provide a many valuable resources and the partners recommend students using as many as possible. Furthermore, they encourage people to not be afraid to do something different, and wander off the traditional career pathways.
Finally, the biggest piece of advice that Adrien and Hyla offer is to -
Do something you're legitimately passionate about. If you relentlessly pursue what you love, you will wake up every day excited to work, regardless of how difficult things get along the way. Don't just caught up with the exciting idea of being an entrepreneur, instead do what you love.
Goals for Next Year
The official rebranding of 437 took place approximately in August 2017, so the partners are now just finishing up their first year of sales.
Going forward, their main goal is to grow the brand's Australian market and presence. They also want to generate as many sales as possible from holiday gift purchases and seasonal travellers.
To avoid delays in getting inventory to customers, the 437 team will continue to work on improving their understanding of manufacturing and production processes. They have realized that it is important to work well in advance when planning and releasing new inventory, and are excited to finally be in a position to do so.
Another major goal is to have an active brand presence at the 2019 Miami Swim Week trade show. 437 aims to put on a 437 Swimwear runway show, and also have a trade show. This will assist the girls in another one of their aspirations, which is to grow their wholesale side of the business.
Furthermore, 437 is working on its new ribbed collection, as well as a few different lines within the next 12 months.
The company wants more readers to experience its newsletters - https://437swimwear.com/pages/newsletter-signup
and also to sign up to their Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/437swimwear/
Finally, Adrien and Hyla hope it will just be a matter of time before a Kardashian is photographed wearing a 437 bathing suit. Perhaps some smart marketing mavens from Queen's will help them make this dream come true, in addition to growing their Australian presence, and all the other aforementioned goals!